130 WOOD PULP FOR PAPER. 
the scene undergoes another rapid change : the thistles suddenly lose 
their sap and verdure, their heads droop, the leaves shrink and fade, 
the stems become black and dead, and they remain rattling with the 
breeze one against another, until the violence of the pampero, or hurri- 
cane, levels them with the ground. 
In the Russian steppes the wormwoods and thistles grow to a size 
unknown in the rest of Europe ; it is said that the thistle-bush found 
where these abound is tall enough to hide a Cossack horseman. The 
natives call all these rank weeds, useless for pasture, burian, and,. 
together with the dry dung of the flocks, this constitutes all the fuel 
they possess. 
According to a patent taken out in July, 1854, by Lord Berriedale, 
all varieties of the thistle are applicable for paper-making, but more 
particularly the large" Scottish thistle, which grows much too luxu- 
riantly in many parts of Great Britain, attaining a great height and 
thickness of stem, and which furnish in each plant fibre of great 
tenacity to a large amount. This, when duly prepared, is stated to be 
well suited for the preparation of a paper pulp, which will cohere very 
powerfully, as well as prove useful in textile manufactures.. It may be 
used either green or dry ; if for paper it goes through a process 
similar to that which rags are subject to, and if for manufactures, 
like flax. 
The common stinging-nettle has a splendid fibre, and in Germany 
has been made into first-class paper. The world is so prosperous, so 
well to do, and well dressed, that commerce cries in vain for rags to- 
feed the paper-mills. And here are millions of reams of the green 
material — the much-abused and long-neglected nettle — idly growing in 
our very ditches. And now this thing of ditches shall be gathered and 
steeped, and daintily manipulated, and come forth to the world in its 
revealed self, the whitest, purest paper ! Beauty that would squeal at 
a touch of the saw-edged leaf of the nettle, calling it a cruel odious 
thing, may now lay her hand on the purified leaf, and, tracing thereon 
gentlest thoughts for eager, happy eyes, may bless the common stinging- 
nettle. 
It has been proved, then, that paper can be made of almost any- 
thing, — from the bark of trees, the down of the Asclepiads, whose 
rankness is one of the greatest nuisances the gardener has to contend 
with, — silk, flax, or cotton waste, — seaweed, the tendrils of the vine, 
beetroot refuse, cabbage -stalks, potatoes, wood-shavings, and sawdust, 
— ferns, grasses, nettles, and peat, a substance covering hundreds of 
thousands of square miles in Ireland and other parts of Europe. I have 
seen samples of beautiful drab-coloured paper made in Western Canada, 
from scraps of leather, straw, and rags. 
There are thousands of fibrous materials in the world of nature that 
the art of man can macerate into pulp, and shape into paper. The 
very wasps with their weak mandibles construct their paper nests as a 
